Patent Literature 1: JP 2012-171387 A
There is a technology to capture an image of a vicinity state (state in vicinity) of a vehicle with an in-vehicle camera to enable a vehicle to recognize the vicinity state of the vehicle based on the captured image (for example, refer to Patent Literature 1).
The technology in Patent Literature 1 recognizes a predetermined target object such as a pedestrian from the captured image data and displays the target object in a display apparatus to be highlighted by surrounding the target object with a rectangular frame having high brightness. This enables the driver to recognize the presence of the target object clearly in the display apparatus even in a less-visible state such as a nighttime state that does not permit naked eyes to see it easily.
Further, a target object may be hidden by a different object; this may disable the vehicle (i.e., an in-vehicle image recognition apparatus) to recognize the target object from the captured image data even though the target object is actually present. In this case, the unrecognized target object appears in the display apparatus directly without any change from the captured image data while being not surrounded with any frame for highlighting. In contrast, a recognized target object appears in the display apparatus to be highlighted while being surrounded with a frame for highlighting.
In such a display manner, the driver may be attracted by the target object that appears in the display apparatus to be highlighted by being surrounded with the frame based on the recognition by the vehicle, whereas the driver may find a difficulty to recognize in the display apparatus a target object that appears without being surrounded with any frame due to a failure in the recognition by the vehicle. That is, when both the vehicle and the driver do not recognize a target object, there is a possibility to lead to the failure in taking an appropriate measure to the target object that is not recognized.
In contrast, if a target object recognized by the vehicle is displayed without any surrounding frame; any target objects appear in the display apparatus under an identical condition regardless of whether a target object is recognized by the vehicle or not. However, this display manner of displaying all the target objects under the identical condition makes it difficult for the driver to understand which target object is recognized by the vehicle. As a result, the driver becomes uneasy about whether the vehicle can provide a suitable driving support by recognizing any necessary target object.